Posted on by Marina Fazio

Stickers, Sewing, and Sex Work: A Day at the Maryland Historical Society

This past weekend, our class took a trip to the Maryland Historical Society to get a better understanding of the context that the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore was writing in.

I LOVE field trips and museums, so I was looking forward to spending the day in a historical society.

Being able to learn about what kind of world these women were writing in has allowed me to better understand what may have motivated women to be writers during this period.  One of the larger exhibits in the Historical Society was dedicated to examples of needlepoint.  The ability to sew was considered a very important skill for women to have, so many spent their time learning how to make needlepoint samplers.  Along with the ability to sew, learning languages, such as French, was also considered a valuable educational pursuit for young women.  Elizabeth Bonaparte, who is the focus of an exhibit at the historical society, had a tutor from France so that she could learn French.  This interest in foreign languages can also be seen in the works of club members, like Florence Trail, who translated Italian poetry for anthologies in English. These pursuits represented what was considered culturally relevant and important for the women of the club, but in different ways.  Needlepoint followed traditional gender roles as an acceptable task for women.  Languages, while also traditionally acceptable, were being used by the women of the club to become more engaged in literacy practices that were often reserved for men, thus going against the cultural norms.

Picture courtesy of Jill Fury

The interest in educational advancement for women was apparent when we had the opportunities to examine some documents from the period.  A course catalogue from the Lutherville Female Seminary included a list of students enrolled at the institution.  I was surprised to discover that some of the students had come from as far away as Florida and Iowa.  The fact that they would travel such a long distance shows that the educational opportunities for women of the period were severely lacking.

 

Picture courtesy of Katie Kazmierski

One of the more interesting and entertaining things that I learned about the work of women in the period came in the form of a bordello map.  Women’s groups of the period worked towards social reform, promoting a more moral society with better life choices.  In an effort to lead sailors to a pure moral path, they handed out maps of known bordellos near the docks where the sailors worked.  Unfortunately, this plan backfired and essentially gave the sailors a map of where to find prostitutes in the city.  This provided an interesting example of the work being done by women in the period, and also of how that work was received by the general public.

Picture courtesy of Jill Fury

 

Finally, to fully explain the title of my post, I must mention the best part of the day at the Maryland Historical Society: the stickers. I have loved stickers since I was a child (I collected them!), so getting one of the stickers that are given out for visitors brightened up my rainy day.  It is now displayed proudly next to my Maryland crab sticker on my laptop.

Posted on by Jean Lee Cole

Final Tally, Recovery Round One

So what did we find?

After a short but intense week of searching through databases, online archives, digital repositories, library catalogs, Wikipedia, and some scattershot Googling, the tally is in: over 320 works published by the 250-odd members of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore during its 50 years in existence. It’s an astounding total by any measure, especially since we also know that we are not finished finding their works.

"Knitting," by Ella Morrow Sollenberger (1918)
This poem by Ella Morrow Sollenberger appeared to have been widely read. Megan found this copy in a volume of Current Events, published by the New York Times, detailing U.S. responses to World War I and published in 1918.

What did they write? Poetry and fiction, to be sure. But also lots of history, plays, anthropological works, translations (from Italian, German, French, Russian, and Hebrew), scientific treatises, songs, operas, children’s books, recipes, even some political commentaries. Despite the fact that many of these women embraced their domesticity—as well as their gentility—their creativity seemed boundless.

In the next few weeks, the class will be diving deeper into the world of American print culture between 1890-1940, looking especially in magazines, newspapers, and bricks-and-mortar archives for additional publications, reviews, and biographical information about these women. Some were well-known society figures; others were recognized intellects, scientists, and authors; and some remained obscure, sharing their writing within the friendly confines of the Academy of Sciences assembly room, where the Club met on Tuesdays for over 40 years, but hidden to the world outside those walls. We hope to bring these works, especially, to the light of day.

Clara, Megan, and I will be building a user-friendly online Virtual Library; for now, you can browse through the listings and do some basic sorting and searching of these texts. Over the next few weeks the class will be reading these works and deciding which ones to publish in an anthology of Club writings. We are also continuing to transcribe the minutes from Club meetings, and will be continuing to post about those oddly fascinating documents too.

Posted on by Tara Brooky

In search of Cautley, Coale, and Cloud

Last week I took my first jab at researching some of these women in the club. I found the work incredibly meticulous and overall frustrating. I felt like I was sifting through virtual piles of forgotten texts and coming up empty-handed. Yet when I finished the assignment I felt like I really was not finished at all. I was ready to keep going, it is cheesy but the more I found about these women, the more questions I had.

L. R. Cautley or Lucy Randolph Cautley was pretty active within the club. She shared lots of articles throughout her time as a member. They seemed to be short stories and essays never published. What I did find online of hers was sparse in comparison to the amount she shared at club meetings. Cautley had a fascination with Rudyard Kipling, the author of the Jungle Book. She shared with the club a few things she wrote about his work and in 1901 had an essay about his work published. This seemed to be the most notable thing she had ever published. Although she was not known for poetry, she did have a poem published in Harper’s Monthly. The only other things I could find on her were three copyrights of dramas with authorship by her. I could not find any text on them, if they were ever performed, or sold, or any other reason which would draw her to want to copyright them. I hope to solve that mystery in my second phase of research on her.

Mrs. James Casey Coale really frustrated me in research. I only found she was mentioned in the minutes as presenting two of her published books to the club to keep in their library. She was not an official member of the club as far as I could tell. Her book The Cottage by the Sea was insanely easy to find. But the other book seems to have never existed, and maybe for a good reason, it was titled Leila the Hindoo Girl, so I can only imagine the type of material it contained. I think what I found most frustrating about Coale was that she exclusively goes her husband’s name, but her husband can not be found anywhere! Hopefully in phase two of the research I can find out who Mr. James Casey Coale was and thus, find out more about who the Mrs. was.

Virginia Woodward Cloud was an extremely active member inside and out the club. She was a popular poet whose poems are still popping up in recent anthologies and/or reprints. It is very refreshing to me that people have held on to Cloud’s poetry and continue to make her selections available online. I am excited to start reading some of her works and uncover some forgotten ones. Also, she seemed to be a very well-liked woman within the club. Since she was a bit more revered than other women at the time, I hope this allows for me to find out more about her aspects of life through research.

Posted on by Sydney Johnson

Women Writing (a LOT)

Over the past week, our assignment for our class has been to find publications from the women in the Club. I was assigned Maud Early, Marguerite Easter, May Evans and (my personal favorite) Christine Ladd Franklin.

I was able to find published works for all of these women, but the one who sparked the most interest for me was Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin who is exclusively referred to as Mrs. Fabian Franklin in the minutes.

Marina touched on Mrs. Franklin in her most recent post, which was fascinating for me to read after all of her work I was able to find. Mrs. Franklin was born in 1847 and went to Vassar College. She then went on to study at Johns Hopkins and was the first woman to have finished the requirements for a Ph.D in math and logic. Unfortunately, she was not given this title until much later in her life because of Johns Hopkins’ policy on coeducation at the time.

All of Mrs. Franklin’s publications are focused on her studies of math, logic and psychology. Her ideas about color vision were revolutionary in the field of psychology and mathematics. She has published over 50 articles in various magazines and journals. That being said, on her Wikipedia page, there are only eight publications listed. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will be able to update that to include all of her works that were published.

Another issue that I have with Mrs. Franklin is that all of her work is under the name of Christine Ladd Franklin. I have even seen Ladd and Franklin hyphenated because Franklin is her married name. Yet in the meetings, she is only referred to as Mrs. Fabian Franklin. We talked about this in class and have decided that the Club was very strict with their procedures as one of their mottos is “consistency, thou art a jewel.” So maybe the Club wasn’t necessarily trying to stifle Mrs. Franklin and her accomplishments so much as they were trying to keep control over the small things that mattered to them. These small things were sometimes all women had control over and so I don’t blame them…that much.

Posted on by Marina Fazio

Science and Fiction

To be completely truthful, I was not extremely excited when faced with the task of transcribing meeting minutes.  I knew that it had some historical significance, and I do believe that making historical documents accessible is a fantastic project, but I thought it would be a mindless activity.  I had done some transcription of files for a summer job, and it was absolutely soul-sucking. However, as I began to read the minutes from the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore, I became fascinated with their activities.

Some of the most fascinating minutes I have transcribed thus far came from the 78th meeting.  This meeting was noted to be directed by the Committee on Fiction, so I expected the minutes to include short stories or excerpts from novels written by club members.  Instead, the first work presented was actually a presentation on scientific hypotheses.  Mrs. Fabian Franklin presented an article titled “The Sensation of Color,” explaining the different ideas about sensation and perception of light and color.  What was most interesting was what the secretary recorded about Mrs. Franklin’s presentation: “Mrs. Franklin advanced to a new theory of her own, differing from those mentioned,– and supported it with skill and ability.”  This line, though short, absolutely astonished me.  I had not expected to read that the women in a literary club were presenting their own original scientific theories! I wish the secretary had included more information about the theory, besides saying that it was well presented.  I can only hope that this theory was published and will be recovered by one of my classmates as we continue on with this project.  Otherwise, her ideas will be lost in history.

Posted on by Katie Shiber

The House Not Made with Hands

In transcribing minute meetings, it is easy to get lost in the technicalities of accurate replication, distracting one from content that seems, at times, mundane. However, in my transcription of the 805th Meeting of the Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore held on October 27th 1914, a sentiment was put forth that piqued my interest. The meeting was conducted by the committee on poetry, led by chairman Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese, who began by reading a poem entitled “Ghosts.” However, it was not Miss Reese that brought forth this reflection, but a musing from the secretary herself that caught my eye. She wrote, “Every house where men live and die is haunted. The house not made with hands is the one we really live in. This is the modern touch, taking the place of cruder apparitions of earlier times. Our ghosts have been turned inward.”

I was immediately struck because, unlike other minutes I had encountered, the minute keeper was not simply relaying the conversation of the group, but weighing in herself. She was so moved by the topic of ghosts and apparitions that she felt it necessary to document her thoughts. It is clear that the “house not made with hands” she is referring to is the kingdom of God, quoting from 2 Corinthians 5:1. It is a religious sentiment, but perhaps a social commentary too. These minutes were taken in October of 1914, shortly after the beginning of the first world war, a time in history when the world faced the grim reality of brutal intercontinental conflict, and Americans feared their nation’s entry into the war. Death was no longer a topic easily ignored, but one in the forefront of civilian minds. Perhaps the minute keeper’s words were just a belief that religion had taken precedent over old-fashioned superstition, but maybe she was instead struck by the reality that war was raging and death looming, finding solace in her divine belief in heaven.

Posted on by Megan Hultberg

In the Pursuit of Knowledge

With many topics that arise in the minutes and histories of women literary clubs, the theme of culture runs deep. In the minutes of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore from October 7, 1902 the members announced courses offered in art and then played music and sang. The following week, the meeting of October 14, 1902, was much more packed. Not only had a couple members discussed their newly published books, but also current events.

Much attention was paid to what was occurring within the country,  the United State’s impact elsewhere and other countries’ histories. For example there was mention of the Coal Miner’s strike in the US, which then led to conversation about miner strikes in both France and England. Debate over the Panama and Nicaragua Canals, the relationship between the US and President Diaz, and the history of France, Germany and England in that area. Roosevelt, Cuba and the Prince of Siam were also brought up. There is no limitation to the US or Europe, but an intrigue in countries spread across the world.

The women of this era were so interested and invested in being as knowledgeable as possible. Gere makes the point in her novel Intimate Practices that by a woman “acknowledging her own background, she nods toward international travel and the reading of literature as vehicles for achieving the desired cultivation” (182). During these minutes, the President Mrs. J. C. Wrenshall, was abroad. And in the minutes from October 14th after discussion of current events, the conversation returned to the best selling novel of the month and the growth of newspapers. No matter the subject of conversation, these women move around numerous topics, giving thought out and knowledgeable opinions. There is an evident strive to improve themselves individually, but also raise each other up by sharing literature the knowledge.